Judicial Noncompliance with Mandatory Procedural Rules under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

M. Todd Henderson and William H. J. Hubbard

The Journal of Legal Studies, 2015, vol. 44, issue S1, S87 - S105

Abstract: Section 21D(c)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act subjects courts to an unusually clear mandate: courts must make findings on whether attorneys complied with Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (which sanctions frivolous or unsupported claims) in every case arising under the act. Yet we find that courts make these required findings less than 14 percent of the time. We also find that the required Rule 11 findings are not more likely in cases where parties seek sanctions under Rule 11 but are made overwhelmingly in court orders approving settlements--the circumstance in which sanctions are least likely. To explain these surprising results, we offer an account of judicial behavior that emphasizes judicial learning, judicial effort, and the crucial ways in which the incentives of the judge and of the attorneys may interact in complex cases.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/682695 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/682695 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/682695

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Legal Studies from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().